Cold Cases in Pennsylvania
ColdCaseIndex documents 17 cases in Pennsylvania, dated 1949 to 2012. 12 are recorded as unsolved. The earliest is Dorothy Forstein (1949) and the most recent is Kortne Stouffer (2012).
- Unsolved 12 (71%)
- Partly resolved 1 (6%)
- Solved or convicted 4 (24%)
Homicide clearance in Pennsylvania, 1965 to 2024
A homicide is "cleared" when police make an arrest or close it by exceptional means, so an uncleared case is not always an unsolved one. Source: Murder Accountability Project analysis of FBI Uniform Crime Report data, as published by Project: Cold Case. These are statewide totals and are separate from the ColdCaseIndex entries listed below.
By type
All Pennsylvania cases
Kortne Stouffer
Kortne Ciera Stouffer, a 21-year-old woman, vanished from her Palmyra, Pennsylvania apartment in the early hours of July 29, 2012, hours after police responded to disturbances there.
Joey Lynn Offutt
Joey Lynn Offutt, 33, was found to be missing on July 12, 2007, when a deliberately set fire destroyed her home in Sykesville, Pennsylvania, and the body of her six-week-old son was found inside.
Danielle Imbo and Richard Petrone Jr.
Danielle Imbo, 34, and Richard Petrone Jr., 35, a dating couple, vanished after leaving a bar on South Street in Philadelphia on the night of February 19, 2005. Neither they nor Petrone's pickup truck have ever been found.
Ray Gricar
Ray Gricar, the longtime district attorney of Centre County, Pennsylvania, vanished on April 15, 2005, after telling his girlfriend he was taking a day trip.
Hyun Jong "Cindy" Song
Hyun Jong "Cindy" Song, a 21-year-old Penn State student, vanished after being dropped off at her State College, Pennsylvania, apartment early on November 1, 2001, following a Halloween night out.
Judy Smith
Judy Smith, a 50-year-old nurse from Newton, Massachusetts, vanished from a Philadelphia hotel in April 1997. Five months later her stabbed remains were found more than 600 miles away in the North Carolina mountains, and how she…
Gary Heidnik Victims
Gary Heidnik abducted six women between November 1986 and March 1987 and held them captive in the basement of his North Philadelphia home, where Sandra Lindsay and Deborah Dudley died.
Cherrie Mahan
Cherrie Mahan, an 8-year-old girl, vanished on February 22, 1985, after getting off her school bus about 50 feet from her home in rural Winfield Township (near Cabot), Butler County, Pennsylvania.
The Frankford Slasher
The 'Frankford Slasher' is the name given to an unidentified serial killer who stabbed to death at least eight or nine women in and around the Frankford neighborhood of Philadelphia between 1985 and 1990.
Philip Testa
Philip "Chicken Man" Testa, 56, reputed head of the Philadelphia crime family, was fatally injured on March 15, 1981 when a nail-packed bomb exploded on the porch of his South Philadelphia home.
Holly Branagan
Seventeen-year-old Moira "Holly" Branagan was stabbed to death in the kitchen of her family's home on Pine Top Trail in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on March 28, 1979.
Susan Reinert
Teacher Susan Reinert of Ardmore was last seen on June 22, 1979; her body was found three days later in the trunk of her car at a hotel near Harrisburg. Her children, Karen, 11, and Michael, 10, were never found.
Holly Maddux
Helen "Holly" Maddux, 30, was last seen in Philadelphia on September 9, 1977; her body was found in March 1979 in a trunk in the apartment of her former partner, Ira Einhorn.
Evelyn Colon ("Beth Doe")
The dismembered remains of a pregnant young woman were found in three suitcases along the Lehigh River near White Haven, Pennsylvania, in December 1976.
Betsy Aardsma
Betsy Aardsma, a 22-year-old Penn State English graduate student, was stabbed once in the chest in the stacks of the Pattee Library on November 28, 1969, the day after Thanksgiving. No one has ever been charged.
Joseph Augustus Zarelli
A young boy's battered, naked body was found in a cardboard box in Fox Chase, Philadelphia. Known for decades as 'America's Unknown Child,' he was finally identified in 2022 as Joseph Augustus Zarelli through DNA genealogy.
Dorothy Forstein
Dorothy Forstein, the wife of Philadelphia magistrate Jules Forstein, disappeared from her home on the night of October 18, 1949. Her young daughter said she saw a man in a brown cap carry her unconscious mother out of the house.